Covid!

Well that’s the Covid box ticked. We live to tell the tale. It’s possible I was just really lucky and got a really mild version but I’m going to give my immune system credit for this one. After all, it’s the foundation of all I believe to be true about health and wellbeing, it’s what I stand up for, probably not as much as I should.

Ayurveda, for example, is a preventative approach to health and wellness, promoting natural immunity to prevent illness and otherwise creating the conditions for the body to heal itself in the face of illness. Reiki and yoga play a key role in this too, both helping to promote and support our health and wellbeing and also helping us to understand - and come to terms with - the root cause of any loss of wellbeing.

All of these approaches, spiritual in nature, allow us to know more of our own body, mind and soul. This is crucial when it comes to our wellbeing. If we do not know our body is ill, how can we do anything about it? If we do not know what stresses our mind then how can we take steps to rectify it? If we do not pay attention, how can we know if we are living our of balance and creating our own frustrated version of reality?

I knew I had Covid. Not least because Ewan had also tested positive and I was displaying similar symptoms to him, namely a headache and achy bones, but because of the slightly foreign feeling I had in my body. It had been slowly coming on for days, but what surprised me was the fact I only tested positive two days after the headache and achy bones came and went (within a night).

In the midst of those symptoms though, I surrendered to it and took to bed with my Reiki hands keen to explore it. I could feel it was attempting to attack my nervous system so I went into it and tried to befriend it, welcome the lessons it was bringing me. I slept on and off for 12 hours giving myself a whole heap of Reiki in the process, and felt hugely better the next morning, and never really felt any other symptoms other than having a strange metallic taste in my mouth and a loss of interest in dark chocolate, plus the ongoing feeling that something alien was trying to inhabit my body.

I immersed myself in Ayurveda, following some of the tips from the Ayurvedic Clinic, which you can find here, including the warm coriander and ginger water and the ginger, lime and honey, as well as focusing on light foods centred on organic vegetable soups and organic white rice. I bathed in dead sea salts, meditated, practised yoga and gave myself a lot of Reiki. I continued teaching online throughout and re-painted the healing space while listening to Buddhist lectures!

I chose not to vaccinate simply because I trusted the wisdom of my immune system to support me if I contracted Covid and I feel my decision FOR ME has been validated. If I felt that everyone was sharing my experience then I would really question all the fuss being made, but I am aware that others are not faring so well and the virus lasts longer, seeking out a weakness in all body systems and taking hold there. I tested negative at the end of day four, yet it took Ewan seven days.

Interestingly my brother and sister in law in Australia contracted the virus at the same time as Ewan and I and we have been able to share experiences, which are very similar, in that the men have suffered more than us ladies and this seems to be common amongst my brother’s community, with it lasting longer for them too. But who knows. That’s the thing. We’ve just got to go with it and see what lessons it brings to us individually and as a family.

I feel that the biggest problem now is not so much the virus, albeit I appreciate it is a problem for some people, but the rules that are in place, especially around contact tracing. But let’s see where it goes, we have to take comfort in the fact that as a whole the virus has decreased in virulency and that can only be a good thing, albeit becoming increasingly contagious instead to ensure its longevity. This is the thing with viruses, like us, they want to keep living, so they will do all they can to ensure their survival and hence the manner in which they mutate in response to vaccination (external influence).

Nature is nature is nature, I wish we’d remember this and stop thinking that we’re somehow above it or more powerful than it. All this “kill it'“ message seems so counter to the idea of a peaceful world that I really struggle with it. Why are we teaching our children to kill? Why always this separation and division, this us and them approach, creating disharmony and feeding the whole ‘war’ and FEAR. Urgh. We’re told we’re at war with a virus! It’s just nature. Which means that ultimately we’re at war with ourselves as we are just nature too. I despair.

I receive dharma from a Buddhist Sri Lankan monk via the Ayurvedic Institute and I have caught up with a number of these recordings while cottage-bound and I am reminded that what we resist persists. Nature will always find a way to express itself. We can only try to control it so far before it reminds us who is ultimately in control. I’m also reminded that we are the source of our own suffering in the way that we think and relate to the world and the more we are fearful and averse to something, the greater our mental suffering will become.

I’ve seen that played out with certain clients these last few months who have some fear around contracting Covid to the extent that it has stopped them living they lives to the full. I have compassion for them because fear is a horrible thing to buy into, let alone their loss of trust in their bodies and their immune systems, which causes them to unnecessarily fret about being hospitalised from Covid, or dying from it. Obviously it’s a possibility, there is always the possibility of death, we have no idea when that moment will come, but must we stop living while alive because our fear of death is so great?

Sure we take precautions, we might vaccinate and boost, we might eat well, we might practice yoga, we might do all these things, but still there is no certainty. It is this, ultimately, that causes the suffering. The lack of certainty. So do we make friends with it, live for the moment, where all is certain and known, or do we allow our mind to drift off into the future, fretting about something which has not yet happened? As my Buddhist monk would probably say, the problem is not Covid, it is the thinking mind! Live in the now!

Anyway, I thought I’d share my experience with you in the hope that it might comfort you and give you greater faith in your immune system and know that you can strengthen it holistically, allow it its own wisdom. The immune system is amazing, give it the right conditions and it will do all it can to support you - obviously it helps if you can listen to your body and acknowledge its needs and ‘right conditions’. And that my friend, is where yoga can be so helpful, embodied yoga, because it takes you deeper into the wisdom.

Needless to say I was back in the sea as soon as I could, because connection with nature and being in the elements is what really ends up making a difference, breathing fresh air, feeling the sea air on our skin, body immersed in cold water, it’s the stuff that truly makes us feel alive, and the sunrises are just spectacular on those cold January mornings. Of course I visited a sacred site too, they’re healing places, shifting vibrational energy. We’re very lucky here on Guernsey to have all this on our doorstep - even Lihou, just a short walk away.

I’m grateful for the opportunity to experience Covid and for the gift it brought in allowing me to heal myself. Like recovering from surgery or from other illnesses over the years, I find the process empowering because we are encouraged to know more of ourselves and take ownership, befriend our experience, go in, rather than looking outside ourselves and giving our power away. We each have an innate wisdom that knows how to heal, we each can tap into this, we just have to be quiet, attentive and still.

Thank you to all of you who were able to join me online during this time and for all your new year love. I’ve got a positive feeling about this one, we just have to keep surrendering to all the challenges it brings and allow ourselves to be positively changed by them.

Love Emma x